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How to Be Happy and Live Fearless by Overcoming Fear, Stress, and Anxiety

This is no fluff, straight to the point, action based information that can change your life.

To be happy and start living fearless, you only need to know this: You’re not here to win, you’re here to learn. The more you accept this, the less fear, stress, and anxiety you’ll have in your life and the happier you will be. All fear is imagined; thus the side effects of stress and anxiety are self-inflicted.

The secret to living a fearless life is truth. Truth about yourself and the purpose you have in this world. The truth about fear is it’s imagined. If you put in the dedication of knowing yourself completely and un-dividing your mind, you’ll discover it’s the same with stress and anxiety; it’s all imagined or created in your mind. Yet, even though many accept this logic (of our mind being our biggest problem), then why is everyone still running around full of fear, stress, anxiety, and ultimately unhappiness?

One reason is we’re chasing an illusion; the illusion of success and winning defined by society, parents, friends, etc. I too lived the illusion for many years. Since my early twenties I had this image in my mind of what success looked like. It consisted of a loft apartment overlooking the city and driving a Porsche. My idea of success had nothing to do with personal character or the individual I would become; it was based on status and materialism. I would set all these goals for myself, reach them, and then trudge on to the next one. I was never satisfied and still full of fear, anxiety, and stress.

Are you stuck? Maybe you’re like I used to be. Trudging through life, not really sure how to be happy while hating and fearing two things; the way things are and change.

I was lucky. I become desperate enough to seek a better way. Not the easier way—at first—but I’ve certainly discovered how to be happy. So can you.

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HTBH 013: Faith and Walking the Walk

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walking over bridgeWe all know how important it is to tell those we love how we feel, but do we live it?

We had a scare a few weeks ago when Emily went into the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.  The experience enforced the concept of maintaining our spiritual condition. That we stay in good spiritual shape—making deposits into our spiritual bank account—to draw upon in times of need.

In a brief off topic discussion, I brought up the practice of replacing the phrase “I don’t have time” with “it’s not a priority for me.” This can really change your perspective on the importance of something. This concept was sparked by the post The Illusion of Time.

Emily experienced some pain on Monday, April 30th while working and realized that night she needed to go to the hospital. After they discovered some blood in her urine, we realized this could be one of those moments that change your life significantly. We discussed the concept of how we talk the talk, but now we get to find out if we can walk the walk.

We made a conscious decision, together, to stay in the moment and make a choice to not buy trouble and let it be what it’s going to be.

CT scans discovered an inflamed appendix and during the surgery they discovered a hematoma. Emily was in the hospital for four days and is still recovering.

It’s so important to let those you love know how you feel. But even though we know this concept, do we really practice it? If not, why? Is it ego or pride? If so, we need to work on that, get it out of the way, and stop letting it hinder our emotional connectedness with ourselves and others.

I went through some emotions as the spouse of someone in the hospital. Things like what’s the best way to manage time away from the hospital and being there for your spouse?

Our relationship works so well because we didn’t feel as if we were losing anything by committing to each other (at least as a man, I felt in many relationships like I had to give up my individuality or time I enjoy spending alone or on hobbies, etc.)  Also, even though our joy is much grander with each other, we accept that our spouse is not responsible for our happiness.

Emily shares that spending time in the hospital, although not a fun experience was a great experience.

EGO – Easing God Out

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HTBH 012: Happiness and Emotional Intelligence

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emotional intelligence“Emotional intelligence as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” – Salovey & Mayer

Emily and I just returned from a trip to Belize and shared a little bit about our great vacation; diving with sharks and eating lionfish!

We start off by sharing what emotional intelligence means to us. The ability to make rational decisions and not just react based on the immediate emotion felt.

We talk about how to avoid emotional blind spots by feeling the emotions completely and then being able to detach from them in a healthy manner. In the past, I had a lot of emotional blind spots; emotions I avoided because they were uncomfortable since I was emotionally immature.

There’s a difference in being emotional and emotionally mature or connected.

Being more emotionally intelligent makes us better communicators. We can be more empathetic.

By being more emotionally connected, we can communicate more through energy and pick up on non-verbal cues; people pick-up on emotionally intelligence, both consciously and sub-consciously.

It’s healthy to be emotionally connected with self; we have empathy for self and thus care more about how we’re treated, both by ourselves and others.

Positive thinking only works if we put things into action, it should be power of positive doing.

Laughter is powerful because it forces you to be completely in the moment.

Crying is good.

Emotional Intelligence is awareness and mindfulness; the ability to be a witness to your emotions sometimes referred to as cultivating the witness. We can let the conversations and emotional battles go on inside our heads without being involved. This allows us to make more rational decisions and communicate more effectively.

Sometimes when we feel hurt, it helps to stop and stay “it’s not about me.” And once we say that, then it isn’t about us anymore.

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How to Find Yourself: 5 Tips on Discovering Who You Really Are

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.” -W.H. Auden In the ever expanding niche of personal and self-development, there’s [...]

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HTBH 011: Happiness and Awareness

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In order to find true inner-peace and happiness, we first need to have some awareness. This awareness is composed of two parts: 1) the awareness that something needs to change and 2) awareness of your thoughts and inner-dialog. Early in my life I achieved my childhood dream of becoming a zookeeper and had the awareness [...]

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HTBH 010: You Are Not Your Relationships

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Emily and I discuss the concept that you are not your relationships. We had a listener leave a heartfelt message on our podcast line about a recent breakup. To set this up, Dr. Dyer in his book Your Sacred Self: Making the Decision to Be Free, he discusses the idea of the ego and spirit [...]

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HTBH 009: How to Be Happy Aging

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Aging is just a hard fact of life. Inescapable. In this episode of the How to Be Happy Podcast, Emily and I sit down to discuss our outlook on aging. We share our experience on resisting aging and how to accept it gracefully. One important aspect of finding happiness in aging is acceptance. A major [...]

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008 How to Be Happy Podcast: Happiness and Change

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Emily experienced a change recently at work and we sat down to discuss how to be happy in times of change. We discuss the challenges when dealing with change and how it’s up to us to make any change positive. Even when change is thrust upon us, and we seemingly have no choice, we can [...]

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How to Live Happy, 2 Tips That Will Change Your Life

There are four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love. – Johnny Depp I’ve suffered and worked hard so hopefully you don’t have to. Here are two tips [...]

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